Late Friday night Ron, Harry, and Hermione went to Hogsmeade to catch a late bus to St. Mungo's Hospital. Professor McGonagall accompanied them to Hogsmeade to see them off.

"How exactly are we getting there?" Hermione asked Professor McGonagall.

"I booked you each a seat on the Knight Bus," said Professor McGonagall.

"Oh no," said Harry, and as if on cue the bright purple, triple-decker bus screeched round a house and halted in front of them, the left front tyre stopping a mere two inches away from Harry's foot.

The door swung open and the driver, an elderly wizard in a purple uniform, peered at them from behind thick glasses. "Is this the stop, Stan?" he said to the conductor, who stepped out of the bus with a clipboard.

"Midnight, Hogsmeade," said the conductor, a purple-uniformed young man with large ears and terrible acne that had not improved since Harry had last seen him two years before. "How do you do?" he said to Professor McGonagall in a dignified voice. "My name is Stan Shunpike, and I will be your conductor this evening."

"I reserved three fares to St. Mungo's Hospital," said Professor McGonagall.

" 'Course we remember, Professor McGonagall, three prepaid seats to St. Mungo's," said Stan, bowing ostentatiously. Then he caught sight of Harry, who wished he knew how to Apparate. "Bless my 'eart, Ern! 'Arry Potter's back on our very own bus!"

"Where?" said Ernie Prang, the driver, craning his neck. "No lad, that's Neville Longbottom."

Stan lost his professional demeanour and accent when he got excited. "No, 'e's 'Arry Potter, dontch'oo remember 'im from a couple years back-"

"I believe the schedule said the bus would depart at midnight, not at twelve-thirty due to a delay for gossiping about the passengers," Professor McGonagall said frostily.

"Terrible sorry, Professor," said Stan, bowing again and motioning to Harry, Ron and Hermione to enter. "No luggage?" They had only their schoolbags, filled not with schoolwork for the journey, as Professor McGonagall thought, but with sweets and food for Hagrid, because Ron had heard from his brother Charlie that hospital food was indigestible. "Right, we're off!"

Ron and Hermione had never been on the Knight Bus, but they were able to fall asleep quickly on their beds at the front of the bus. Harry, however, could feel Stan's gaze practically boring into him every time he closed his eyes, and finally gave up to talk with Stan and Ern.

"Seen the giant in the paper, 'Arry?" Stan said, brandishing the Daily Prophet with Hagrid's face plastered across the front. "Gamekeeper atcher school, wasn' 'e?"

"He still is," Harry said. "He's not dead."

"Paper said he was dying," said Ern, swerving to avoid a barn. Harry noted that his driving skills seemed to actually have gotten worse.

"That's where we're going tonight," Harry said. "To see him at St. Mungo's."

"Oh, St. Mungo's," Stan nodded knowledgeably. "I went there after a garden gnome gave me a nasty bite. Ordinary sort of place, innit?" Harry was surprised by the word "ordinary", which was rarely used for magical things, but Stan went on, not noticing his confusion. " 'Ow come 'e was pokin' round that dragon colony, anyway? Is 'e mad?"

"He's not mad, he just likes dragons," said Harry, and then clutched the brass bedframe as the bus shot through Stockton-on-Tees.

"That sounds mad," said Stan dubiously.

"Ain't Madam Taggart getting off at Yarm?" Ern asked Stan.

"I'll get 'er," Stan said, disappearing up the wooden staircase to the third floor and returning with a small witch who stumbled to the front of the bus, grumbling about "that madman behind the wheel."

"Here we are," said Ern, oblivious to her invective, stomping on the brake to abruptly halt the bus. The witch cast Ern a dark look before getting out.

Four stops later, Harry dozed off. He didn't even realize he'd fallen asleep until Stan prodded him some hours later and said, "Oy, 'Arry Potter, this 'ere's your stop, innit?"

Harry raised his head and nearly tumbled over the side of his bed as the bus squealed to a stop. Hermione and Ron were sitting up in bed, rubbing their eyes. Sunlight streamed through the windows of the bus, and Harry, who had slept with his glasses on, could see a sign in front of the bus saying ST. MUNGO'S HOSPITAL FOR MAGICAL MALADIES AND INJURIES.

"Thanks," Harry, Ron and Hermione said to Stan and Ern as they stepped off the bus.

"Pleasure talking to you," Stan said eagerly, eyeing Harry's scar, and couldn't help adding, "You're a hero."

"Hope to see you again," said Ern, squinting at them through the thick lenses. Harry thought this was a strange choice of words, as Ernie probably could never see much at all, but Harry smiled and nodded as the doors shut and the bus raced off, scattering houses and telephone boxes.

"Two more for the Harry Potter Fan Club," Ron grinned.

"That driver really was terrible behind the wheel," said Hermione faintly, clutching her stomach. "I don't suppose they might have nausea cures here?"

Harry laughed. "At a hospital? Probably not." They stared at the hospital, a tall brick building that looked surprisingly Muggle-like in its modern mundanity. Harry could now see what Stan had meant when he'd said "ordinary sort of place." St. Mungo's would have looked normal even to Vernon Dursley's suspicious eye.

"It doesn't look very magic," Ron remarked after a moment. "If it weren't for the sign over there saying 'BROOMS WILL BE TOWED AFTER 2 HOURS,' I'd think this was a regular Muggle hospital."

"Let's go in and see if they have Hagrid," Hermione said. "And stomach medicine."

Thankfully, the elderly woman behind the reception desk, surrounded by rolls and rolls of parchment heaped on in-out trays, was clearly a witch. She was using her wand to enchant a quill that danced an illegible scrawl across an appointment book, while she knitted with three pairs of needles at once. Dressed in slightly garish fuchsia robes, looking bored, she peered at them from behind silver half-moon glasses and didn't stop knitting as they entered.

"Is this St. Mungo's Hospital?" Harry asked her.

"That's what the sign says," replied the witch. "It's built like a Muggle building because to their eyes the sign reads ST. MATTHEW'S INSTITUTION FOR LEGALLY DERANGED FELONS. It's quite brilliant. The Muggles think it's an insane asylum, which to them explains the people who walk round here in long robes, shouting strange words and waving bits of wood, and they think the patients are convicted criminals, which scares them away." She shook her head. "Silly people, Muggles. We have to make up so many ridiculous things just so they won't come near."

"We'd like to see Rubeus Hagrid," said Ron. Harry felt dizzy, watching the three pairs of knitting needles going all at once.

She glanced at a chart on her desk. "The giant fellow? Room 903 in the burn recovery ward. That's in the Dr. Faustus Figg Memorial Ward, ninth floor, second door on the left. Stairs are down the hall to your right."

"Can you give me a cure for nausea?" Hermione asked the receptionist.

"Took the Knight Bus here, did you?" guessed the elderly witch. She Summoned a box from another room and handed a pink capsule to Hermione. "Take this with a glass of water," she said curtly, seeming impatient to devote her full attention to her knitting.

They walked down the hall to the spiral stairs, which moved by themselves, like the ones going up to Dumbledore's office. "Did you hear the name of the burn recovery ward?" Ron asked.

Harry nodded. "Dr. Faustus Figg Memorial Ward. Professor Figg's husband. He was head of the hospital when he died."

They rode the moving spiral staircase to the ninth floor. R. Hagrid, said the nameplate by the second door on the left. Harry knocked.

"Come in," said the familiar voice of Hagrid.

Harry opened the door. Hagrid lay in a gigantic bed, swaddled in gauze bandages. His red, blistered face, framed by white gauze strips, split into a grin when he saw them. His arms were both bound in plaster casts and suspended in the air by a complex system of strings and pulleys that squeaked when he tried pathetically to wave.

"It's you!" he said happily. "Come in, come in!"

For a moment they were frozen, overcome by shock. Swathed in white bandages and white bedsheets, Hagrid looked like a huge mummy. But that wasn't what troubled him most. Hagrid dwarfed everything in the room, but he seemed small. It was the huge beard - or lack thereof. Hagrid's scalp had retained a few sparse tufts of hair, but the beard had been ravaged. Harry stared, shaken by how different Hagrid looked.

"Hagrid-" whispered Hermione, sounding choked. She rushed suddenly at Hagrid, who enveloped her in his bandaged arms.

"Careful, that's still sore, Hermione," grunted Hagrid, touching his ribs and grimacing. He smiled at Harry and Ron. "Come on in."

They slowly walked to Hagrid's bedside. "Hagrid," Ron said weakly, "where's your beard?"

"Gone up in flames," said Hagrid sadly. "At least I didn't lose me chin as well. Ah well, it'll grow back, won't it?" He tried to put on a brave smile. "I hope my bein' in the hospital didn't ruin yer first week at school after the holidays."

"We were horribly worried," Hermione said. "We were wondering where you were that morning."

"The Daily Prophet came before Dumbledore got your message," Harry said, holding up the newspaper, which Stan had given him.

Hagrid chuckled weakly. "They got some of it right this time. Last time I was in this newspaper, that Rita Skeeter completely ripped me up."

Harry and Ron grinned at Hermione, who had punished Rita Skeeter for her libellous quill by trapping her for several days in a small jar. Hermione said to Hagrid, "I don't suppose this experience will put you off dragons, will it?"

"If anything I like 'em more!" cried Hagrid, brightening.

"But a dragon nearly killed you!" said Ron disbelievingly.

"She was only protectin' her little 'un," Hagrid said. "To her I was an enemy, trying to steal an egg."

Now there was an uncomfortable pause where all three exchanged glances over Hagrid's head. Hagrid had brought up the issue which had not been discussed between the three, but which had been running through their minds the entire week. "Hagrid," Harry asked carefully, "you weren't really trying to steal the egg, were you?"

"Why would I do that?" said Hagrid, suddenly guarded.

"Come on Hagrid, we remember Norbert just as well as you do," said Ron. "Tell the truth! Did you really find the Welsh Green egg on the path, or were you sneaking up to the nest to capture a Norbert II?"

Hagrid was avoiding their eyes. "Well."

"Hagrid!" cried Hermione in dismay. "That's illegal!"

"I wasn't going to take the eggs!" protested Hagrid quickly. "I just wanted to look at 'em, touch 'em maybe. I miss Norbert, but I wasn't going to take the egg, really. Jus' hold it in my hand like I used to with baby Norbert's." He looked downcast. The three of them looked at each other.

"We believe you, Hagrid," Harry said at last. "We were just worried about you getting in trouble."

"In the past week I've been punished enough for a lifetime," said Hagrid, shuddering. "I've never been here before, but I don't think I'll be able to last much longer. It's not the burns," he said hastily, "it's just that the food's rubbish."

Harry remembered the food crammed into their schoolbags, and they took it out and piled it on the bedside table. Hagrid was grateful. "I could hardly swallow it down, those nasty jellies and tough meats. St. Mungo's doesn't have house-elves, I guess."

"That's a good thing!" Hermione said.

"Not for my stomach," Hagrid said feelingly, eating a peppermint humbug. "What I wouldn't do for a good squirrel pot pie... You didn't happen to bring any mulled mead, did you? I didn't think so. I'll have to bribe the nurse to sneak me in a pint."

A stout little wizard with a big white mustache and one arm in a sling poked his head round the door. "Hagrid, want to play croquet? Oh, sorry, didn't know you had guests."

"How can he play croquet?" Ron asked the wizard in surprise. "He can't go outside."

"I bring the outdoors to him!" the wizard answered happily, and demonstrated by turning the floor into a grassy wicket-adorned turf.

"Harry, Hermione, Ron, this is Algie," said Hagrid.

"Oh, they're from Hogwarts!" exclaimed Algie, noticing their uniforms. "How lovely. I have a great-grandnephew there, Neville? Perhaps you know him. I say, you wouldn't be Harry Potter, would you?" he said suddenly. "Why, of course you are, there's the scar right there! And you must be Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. Neville talks about you three all the time. Especially you," he added to Hermione, who turned pink.

"I can't play today, Algie," Hagrid said. "Come back tomorrow."

"Tomorrow we're having a farewell party for Aberforth Dumbledore, Hagrid, have you forgotten? His tail has nearly disappeared by now. He's getting discharged day after tomorrow."

"Aberforth Dumbledore!" Hermione, Harry and Ron exclaimed at the same time.

"Professor Dumbledore's brother," said Hagrid.

"I'd bring Aberforth round to meet you three, but he's seeing doctors all day," Algie said. "He got in an argument with Daedalus Diggle and ended up with a big beaver's tail. And he was the winner!" Algie hooted with mirth. "I tell you, that bloke Diggle's quite a sight with a goat head on an ostrich neck. He needs a three-foot-long brace just to keep his head from falling off!"

"Now that I'd like to see," Ron said.

"You're Neville Longbottom's great uncle?" Harry said to Algie, his curiosity finally overwhelming him. "Are you related to his dad Frank, the Auror?"

"Harry!" Hagrid rebuked him.

"It's all right, Hagrid, I'm proud to be Frank's uncle," Algie said. "Why do you ask?" he said to Harry, adopting a somewhat defiant posture.

"I was just curious," Harry said, feeling embarrassed now that tact had caught up with him.

Algie looked at him with sympathy. "Neville's parents were friends of your parents, if I recall correctly. Would you like to meet them? They won't know you, of course, but they like having visitors, I think."

"We'd like to visit them," Hermione said. "Is that all right with you, Hagrid?"

Just then a nurse appeared in the doorway holding a cup of little coloured pills. "Medication time, Hagrid!" the nurse said cheerily. Hagrid groaned and clamped his jaws shut. "Open up, Hagrid," ordered the nurse. "You must take your pills."

"We'll be back soon," Ron said, grinning as they went out, while Hagrid struggled with the nurse.

The Longbottoms' room was four floors down, in the Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa Ward For the Mentally Unwell. Room 224 had a plaque on the door engraved "F. & L. Longbottom."

Algie rapped gently on the door with his good hand and then turned to Harry, Ron and Hermione. "You no doubt have heard or read about what happened to Neville's parents."

"Neville told us," said Harry.

"They do not recognize anyone they used to know before- before *it* happened. After- it, Frank and Louisa were subjected to numerous powerful Memory Charms. They forgot everything and everyone they had known. Even now, years later, the effects of the Memory Charms last. They both have very short-term memories."

The door opened and Algie turned to face a petite, attractive witch with hazel eyes and freckles like Neville's. "Yes?" she said coolly, almost indifferently. "May I help you? My husband is not in."

"Good morning, Louisa," Algie said in a friendly voice, perhaps immune to the sting of this distant reception. "I'm Algie. Do you remember me?"

Louisa Longbottom frowned slowly. "I'm afraid not."

"May we come in?" asked Algie, then fairly pushed his way in. "You look lovely today, Louisa."

"Thank you," Louisa said vaguely, and she suddenly seized Ron's arm as he followed Algie into the room. She stared hard at him. "Er," said Ron nervously.

"I've seen this face before," Louisa murmured. She released him suddenly and rushed to a chest of drawers by the side of the modestly furnished room. She removed a handful of photographs from the top drawer and shuffled through them, then held out one photo to Ron. "Tell me, please- is this you?"

It was one of Colin Creevey's moving photos, a picture of Ron and Neville playing wizard chess. Ron nodded hesitantly. "Yeah, that's me."

Louisa's face lit up. "I remembered! I remembered something!"

"Very good, Louisa!" cried Algie. "This is Ron Weasley, and here are Hermione Granger and Harry Potter."

"How do you do," Louisa said cordially, motioning them to sit in the mismatched armchairs that furnished the Longbottoms' living room. "My husband will be in soon."

"Do you remember your friends Lily and James Potter?" prompted Algie. "Harry here is their son."

Louisa squinted thoughtfully. "No, I don't believe I know those names."

"It's all right," Harry said, trying to hide his disappointment. He had hoped that the sight of his face, so often likened by others to James Potter's, might jog her memory.

The door opened and a well-built man with greying brown hair entered, and stopped at the sight of the visitors. "Good morning?" he said questioningly as they all rose hurriedly.

"Frank, it's me, your Uncle Algie," Algie said.

"Yes," said Frank Longbottom agreeably.

Algie sighed. Apparently he was not so unaffected by his relations' detachment as Harry had first thought. "Frank, please meet Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger and Harry Potter. They are friends of Neville's. Your son," he added.

"My son?" Frank echoed. Hermione and Harry exchanged glances. How terrible for Neville, to have to suffer this pain and humiliation every time he visited his parents.

Suddenly Frank was staring at Harry. "Your eyes are very green... Have I seen you before?"

"No," said Harry, his pulse quickening. "Are you thinking of my mother Lily?"

"You do have her eyes," Hermione said excitedly, "everyone says so."

Frank's brow furrowed as he strove to remember. "I've seen your eyes somewhere!"

"Photographs?" suggested Louisa, holding out the stack of wizard pictures.

"No! Not photographs!" cried Frank.

He was shaking. The doctors assumed that, having no long-term memory, the Longbottoms could not remember that they had no long-term memory, and hence would not be bothered by the fact. But that was the only thing Frank knew for certain. Louisa was the sole constant in his life that Frank could keep track of. Names, faces escaped him like water through a sieve; locations and orientation he barely managed to retain.

But Frank still knew some things- like what anguish looked like. He saw it all the time on the faces of visitors. The boy they said was his son, whose childhood Frank had completely missed, could not stay in Frank's mind. "Neville," the nurses said to him, "his name is Neville, he's sixteen years old," and all Frank could think each time was, my God, I have a son?

Louisa was marginally better at remembering people from their past, but at least she was making her slow progress, becoming more adept at recalling things that she had seen recently, which Frank forgot mere hours after they occurred.

But Frank wanted badly to remember. Everything was stored at the very back of his head, barricaded behind a brick wall that protected him from his own memories. It had not been his or Louisa's choice to undergo the Memory Charms. Whenever Frank saw the pain on the boy's face (his name, what is his name? he'd be thinking frantically), he wondered if it would have been better if he and Louisa had died all those years ago. Better to have this boy, this alleged son of his, endure grief once and get over it, rather than go through it again and again.

And now this other boy, this child with gleaming green eyes, had appeared, and a tiny crack had fractured the brick wall that guarded his memories. It was only the tiniest fissure- but through it came a whisper of recollection.

Frank was locked in a battle of wits with himself. "Green eyes!" he shouted, and the boy, whose name had already escaped Frank, took a step back in surprise, and Frank could feel the fissure closing up.

He stumbled to a chair, quivering. The ghost of the memory was gone. "Can't remember," he muttered. Louisa fluttered to his side.

"It's all right, darling, it will come someday," she said, soothing and sweet.

"I want to remember now," Frank said, petulantly childish.

"You're making progress, Frank," Algie said reassuringly, patting Neville's father on the shoulder.

Frank looked up at Algie and his visitors in astonishment. "Who are you?"

Algie did not react, only stared at Frank sadly. Then he said to Hermione, Harry and Ron, "Perhaps we'd best be getting back to Hagrid." He ushered them towards the door.

"It was nice to meet you," Harry said to Louisa Longbottom, who gazed at him in silence.

"Was it?" Frank asked in surprise.

Hagrid was reading a letter when they got back to Room 903. He smiled at them benevolently and waved the letter. "It's from Professor Figg, askin' how I'm doing and whether you three got here in one piece." He saw the looks on their faces and his smile faded. "Not a good visit with the Longbottoms?"

"Quite typical actually," said Algie. "You can't stay more than ten minutes with them before they forget why you're there."

"At least we got to meet them," Ron said uncertainly, and brightened. "And Neville's mum remembered my face from a photo."

"Frank nearly remembered Lily Potter," Algie told Hagrid excitedly. "The green eyes very nearly set him off."

Harry was still shaken from Frank Longbottom's fierce response to seeing his face. Hagrid grinned at him, and Harry was comforted, though Hagrid's smile was slightly off-centre because of the tightened, burned skin.

"Harry, yeh should be proud! I haven't heard of Frank Longbottom reactin' to anything for many, many years. He probably does remember your mum an' dad somewhere at the back of his head, but if he remembers them he'll have to remember everything else that happened to him. And that would be a very bad thing."

They spent the rest of the morning talking and playing wizard games with bedridden Hagrid. In the afternoon they persuaded the nurse to let them magick Hagrid's bed out into the courtyard, and took him to watch a lawn bowling tournament among the patients. Daedalus Diggle was playing, and he was indeed quite a sight with his head towering above everyone else. Most of the players furtively used their wands to cheat by conjuring extraneous obstacles onto the Green. (There was no clear winner, and Daedalus Diggle cursed someone's right ear off.)

As the day wore on, Hagrid became dispirited. "I want to go back to Hogwarts."

"You can't," Hermione said. "You need to stay here at St. Mungo's until you're well."

"Who's teaching Care of Magical Creatures?" Hagrid asked.

"Professor Grubbly-Plank," said Harry. "She's all right, but she never brings us Mackled Malaclaws or Firecrabs, only boring tame beasts like Mokes and Jobberknolls."

Hagrid snorted. "Jobberknolls, pah! Those don' even have poison fangs!"

"Everyone misses you, Hagrid," Hermione said, "but we want you to recuperate before you come back."

"And no more poking round dragons' nests," Ron added sternly.

Hagrid solemnly held up his bandaged right hand with a pathetic squeaking of pulleys. "I promise I will get well as fast as I can to save yeh from the boring Jobberknolls."